[August 19, 2010] 'Online retailers should not rely on search to drive sales' Tweet Aug 19, 2010 (DMEUROPE via COMTEX) -- Online retailers should not rely on search to drive business, with the latest quarterly survey from IMRG and The British Population Survey showing that the use of social media has increased fourfold in the last two years. The report for Q2 2010 shows that that internet users visiting social networking and blogging sites have grown to 48.9 percent, up four-fold from Q2 2008. Even though overall access to the internet continues to increase AcaeaEURoe more than half of the UK population now goes online at least once a day AcaeaEURoe the number using the internet for online search is not increasing at the same rate, falling by 0.5 percent during in H1 2010 from 73.7 percent to 73.2 percent. This figure suggests that retailers need to consider the influence that social media has on consumers' purchasing decisions. Online shopping continues to increase AcaeaEURoe up from 66 percent to 67.3 percent during the same period AcaeaEURoe and continues to increase its share of online search. Of those using online search, the number actually shopping online increased by 2.4 percent to 91.9 percent. For the first time there is now evidence of the growing importance of internet access via a mobile device, which, as a proportion of access methods, has grown to 15.1 percent, from 5 percent in June 2008. Distributed for DMeurope.com via M2 Communications (www.m2.com) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]